Magid: Ducking dinosaurs in virtual reality

This may be the year of virtual reality. Or not. We're already seeing a lot of early products hit the market with more on the way. But before I get into that, a little historical perspective from my more than 30 years as a technology journalist.

I've seen a lot of new tech categories emerge over my career, starting with command line PCs like the Apple II and early IBM PC, followed by mouse-driven graphical user interface Macs and Windows PCs. There were personal digital assistants like the Apple Newton and Palm Pilot, all those early cellphones from the late eighties and nineties, the BlackBerry smartphone and then the more sophisticated touch screen iPhone and Android models. Then came tablets and then 3D TVs and then fitness bands and smartwatches.

Every time a new category emerges there is a great deal of hype by industry and predictions by pundits ranging from the bulls who call them game changers to the bears who predict complete failure. Sometimes, as in the case of 3D TV, the bears are right while other categories, like Apple and Android smartphones, the bulls clearly won, despite numerous skeptical articles like one from PC Magazine that predicted that, "Once the initial fever wears off ... the bloom will really be off the rose, and sales will be disappointing (at least here in the U.S)."

I was at the event in 2010 when Steve Jobs announced the iPad which he, and many pundits, predicted would replace PCs for most consumers and, indeed, iPad sales got off to a very good start. A lot of people disagreed with my initial column for this newspaper titled "Apple's new iPad 'underwhelming," and, to some extent I did get it wrong, but lately tablet sales have been kind of underwhelming. Demand is shrinking thanks, in part, to larger smartphones and smaller laptops.

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Now it's time to weigh-in on virtual reality and, like any new category of devices, the only thing I'm 100 percent sure about is that I'm really not sure how well they will do.

Here's what I do know after recently testing out the $599 Oculus Rift that only works while tethered to a high-end PC and the $99 Samsung Oculus VR headset that works by inserting a compatible Samsung smartphone, which runs the software and drives the display and audio. I've also played with the much cheaper Google Cardboard that works with most smartphones. Last November, the New York Times included a free one with every home delivered Sunday paper.

Even that really cheap Google Cardboard headset can be very compelling. If you're in a virtual museum you can look around at all four walls, up at the ceiling and down at the floor. Visually, it really is close to being there. As you get up the food chain, such as with the Samsung VR headset, the experience gets better with significantly clearer visuals and amazingly good games and 360 degree videos thanks to Samsung's partnership with Facebook-owned Oculus, which wrote the software and runs the platform for third party apps.

The high-end Oculus Rift is mindboggling. I don't own one but I have played with one and found it is amazingly immersive. I truly did forget that I was having a virtual experience, especially when I was looking over the edge of a very tall building. I knew I was safely in a room at Facebook headquarters in Menlo Park, but I didn't dare approach that virtual ledge because, emotionally, it really felt like I was on a precipice. When a dinosaur came running up to me, I ducked to get out of the way and, once it stopped running, I reached out to touch it and them walked around to look at it from all sides and bent down to see what its underbelly looked like. I can only imagine the VR version of Jurassic Park.

And speaking of movies, Facebook just announced a design specification for a high- end array of cameras to capture high quality VR video. Other companies, including GoPro, have already released VR cameras that are being used by both professional and amateur film makers.

The Samsung VR software includes a video player and even a Netflix app. With Netflix, the only VR aspect for now is replicating what it's like to sit in a theater or living room to watch video on a virtual large screen but many of the videos really do immerse you in a story.

Some are impressive, especially when experienced on the high-end Oculus Rift, but I do have one concern. When watching these videos, I'm never sure where to focus my attention. Yesterday, I took a walking tour of Havana which was great, but there was action all around me and I wasn't getting the audio clues to know where to look. In 2012 I walked those same streets in the real Havana and, as cool as the virtual tour was, it's nothing compared to experiencing the sounds, the smells and the warmth of the Cuban sun and the Cuban people.

The Oculus Rift does have great 3D sound and will soon release touch controllers to enable you to use your hands. At the recent F8 Facebook developers conference in San Francisco, Facebook chief technical officer Mike Schroepfer demonstrated playing virtual ping pong with a remote opponent and showed how he and a colleague could exchange virtual objects and even take a selfie together in front of London's Big Ben.

It's clear why the leading social media company bought Oculus. VR's most promising feature is the ability to bring people together - just as Facebook already does on our boring old 2D devices.